As spectrometer/telescopes are called upon to be ever more broad (e.g., wide simultaneous spectral coverage), flexible in their application and sensitive in terms of power received, their complexity and size necessarily increase.
Presently proposed spectrometers, to achieve desired very wide spectral coverage at high sensitivity, would require a series of spectrometer systems to span the wide spectral region at a substantially large cost and volume.
Such an approach would be to provide a plurality of beamsplitters in the collimated beam each of which would split off different spectral bands. Each of the spectral bands, so split off, would go to a different grating clustered out around the back of the telescope. This would require a very large package to accomplish the desired goal, and would b prohibitively expensive.
Another approach would be to provide a plurality of telescope and associated spectrometers; one for each spectral band.
The present invention overcomes these disadvantages by providing a very wide spectral coverage grating spectrometer which achieves high spectral resolution, at relatively low cost, in a relatively compact package and with high sensitivity.